What about more subsystem damage?

posted on June 21st, 2009, 1:10 pm

Hey mates!
I believe everyone experienced, that ships are mostly dead before they loose a subsystem (except life support, which fails quite often). I would prefer that shild generator, sensors, engines and weapon systems get damaged statistically more widly before the ship breaks up. I find it strage that ships get destroyed so often, though all of their subsystems are complety available, as there are not sooo many areas on the ships survace, that belong to no subsystem, and they surly wouldn't be the primary target either.

Besides that, it would make battles more diverse, when there are ships with destructed weapons, that try to leave battlefield for repair, blind ships or immovable ships ready to becaptured after the battle.

Please tell me your opinions!

posted on June 21st, 2009, 1:42 pm

I agree, even in the show, more often than not systems fail fairly easily, much before a ship appears to be on the verge of destruction.  So while not going overboard, a little more system damage and failure would be appreciated 

posted on June 21st, 2009, 2:41 pm

I agree. And life support systems shouldnt get disabled so fast. Imagine how many dead bodies lie on the floors of a ship if you send crew to reapir it. If its possible the reapair priority should also be life support systems first and engines second, after that the other systems.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 2:43 pm

Life Support already repairs faster than any other system, it always has. If possible, the subsystem repairs should be empire specific; such as Weapons for the Klingons/Dominion, Life Support/Shields for the Federation, etc.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 3:04 pm

I think even klingons and Jem'Hadar will repair the livesupport at first . Dead you can't fight.
And it would be a bad balance if you just need to destroy livesupport to capture huge klingonships because they need to long to repair the subsystem

Livesupport should be repaird fast.
But the other systems could be repaird  more or less faster
Fed: shields -> engines -> weapons (flee protected)
Kling: weapons -> enginens -> shields (fire and fight)
Dom: weapons -> shields -> engines (stay and figth)
Rom: engines or weapons (weapon = clock) -> shields (if engines at first) engine (if weapons at first) -> weapons or shield (regroup and fight)

posted on June 21st, 2009, 3:37 pm

I think even klingons and Jem'Hadar will repair the livesupport at first . Dead you can't fight.

The Klingons might pay some attention to Life support, but not the Jem'Hadar. Life is nothing to them, they mean nothing to the Founders, Vorta or themselves. If they start to die, they just ram the enemy.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 3:49 pm

Gotta say, subsystem damage is already pretty common in my battles. I rarely have a battle where a ship doesn't have to return to base to repair weapons from 0%, or shields, or sensors, or (most annoying of all) engines. I don't really see any reason it should be made more common, FO already has one of the hardest times repairing damaged ships (with few and far between repair ships and no tractors), making it worse would not be a good move in my opinion.

And if you want a canon comparison then just look at all the times life support failed, when have the crew not restored it before anything bad happens? Just think of 100% as either fully online, or will be repaired before any problems crop up and it makes sense for canon ships to have 100% most of the time, when was the last time a starship's system went down and required days to repair or a trip to spacedock? (the only one I can think of offhand is the enterprise weapons getting stuck in that one episode with the ferengi and riker controlling a ship for testing.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 4:12 pm

I believe I agree with Binks on all points. I find it quite common that my lil' BoP's or Rhienns or Sabers get subsystem damage (crap, stuck without engines!) before getting destroyed. I believe the different factions all have different subsystem repair rates/destruction chances anyway. 

posted on June 21st, 2009, 4:21 pm

I believe the different factions all have different subsystem repair rates/destruction chances anyway. 

They all have the same priorities, no variation. The Dominion would be more concerned with weapons than Starfleet, but all races focus on the same systems in the same order.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 5:23 pm

Well, you get the possibility of upgrading life support with the Dominion for instance. Durability of different subsystems is definitely different among the factions.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 5:49 pm

As far as I know the hitpoints of subsystems can be set independently, but in every example i looked up, the hitpoints were distributed equally.

I also know that the hitchances can be adjusted for each subsystem independently.

I have no idea about the repair rates of any subsystem.

Anyway the game could gain further diversity by giving importance to the durability of subsystems. The subsystem damage is there, but in my opinion there should be a reasonable timegap between destruction and damage, which is normally only half a second before destruction, which renders it unimportant for gameplay.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 6:38 pm

lol, I was just saying what I think it should be on another thread.  It should fail in this order. 1, shields, 2, weapons, 3, engines, 4, hull breaches, 5 life support.  In the show, Life support only failed after, significant power loss, or hull breach, and loss of atmosphere.  In the game ships lose it too fast. IMHO

posted on June 21st, 2009, 11:27 pm

In my experience that's pretty close to the order that systems do fail, I almost never end up with a ship without life support, but ships without weapons or engines are fairly common (I have yet to see one of my ships lose shields though, I have seen others but never mine oddly enough). Just got done with an AI game to work on my Klingon strategy (no where near good enough with them to play online ) and I ended up having 3 ships lose engines, and 4 lose weapons through the half an hour game. That's plenty high of a rate IMHO.

Perhaps you're simply playing high system value ships? Klingon ones are particularly vulnerable due to their low system value (along with low level rom/fed ships) so having a ship lose a system is very common. On the other end of the scale I haven't seen a borg ship lose a subsystem ever, probably because their system rating is so high.

posted on June 21st, 2009, 11:33 pm

Out of my ships, I rarely see anything but Engines damaged, while almost every ship I take over has at least Life Support, Engines and Shields/Weapons dead.

posted on June 22nd, 2009, 1:03 am

Well, in a 3v2 I just played, many of my Romulan vessels lost engines, shields, and weapons... but none lost life support.